Freckle Removal with Laser Treatment

First, before having any laser freckle removal performed, have your dermatologist determine if any of your spots are precancerous or cancerous.

Unusual spots may indicate rare but serious disorders as well as skin cancer, so check with a dermatologist first. If your dermatologist determines the spots to be freckles and not harmful, laser treatment can proceed.

The best thing about freckles is that they are highly treatable with lasers. The treatment usually ends with a highly satisfactory result.

How it Works

A laser, such as a 532nm Nd:YAG KTP Q-Switched laser or Q-Switched Ruby laser, is passed over the area to be treated and the melanin pigment which makes up the freckles is removed by the laser light. Green laser light is particularly effective on brown spots and freckles.

The reason green light works so well at removing brown spots is because melanin pigment is designed to block short wavelengths of light, namely ultraviolet light which is shorter than any visible color of light. We have ultraviolet light, the next longer wavelength is purple then blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and then infrared which is invisible.

So shorter wavelengths of light are more strongly picked up by melanin, thus you can use very low energies of green light to treat brown spots.

Does it Hurt?

Rarely Does Anyone Complain. Most people find the treatment tolerably annoying or slightly uncomfortable. It's not uncomfortable enough that I ever use topical numbing creams prior to treatment. Pain thresholds vary, and in my practice I find that men tend to have lower thresholds for pain than women, but rarely does anyone complain about the pain of the laser treatment.

Possible Side Effects

One of the problems you may get is a little bit of crusting on the skin or a little bit of bruising which may last a week to two weeks following treatment.